Blog Archives
The Items tab – Keep an eye on it
As many of you have no doubt noticed, we have introduced an Items tab on each campaign. This has been a long requested item, and I thought I’d explain why it’s taken so long, and where it’s going.
When I originally architected Obsidian Portal, I imagined that people would be storing and sharing characters, items, spells, locations, and all kinds of RPG-related data. I tried to create the ultimate generic data model that would hold all these things, and characters and items were the first implementations of that.
After using it for a while, I’ve come to realize that characters and items are fundamentally different in how they are used and even if they are used. For example, characters are a core component of every RPG. Items are a component of some, but not others. There are many systems that specifically try to avoid the “We loot the bodies” mentality that pervades D&D. Having played some of these games now, I can see why an Items list isn’t exactly necessary, like a characters tab is.
On the flip side, for games where looting is a central aspect, a raw list of items isn’t much help. Instead, you need something more like a spreadsheet, where you can easily track the items along with their quantity, perhaps the assessed value, plus a bag for currency. In many ways, it needs to resemble a computer RPG inventory screen much more than a raw list of items.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the time right now to give the Items tab the attention it needs, so we have to put it out as-is. We wanted to modify the top navigation to remove the Items and Characters links (which are pretty useless now that we have search), and that would have pretty much orphaned Items forever. So, that’s where we are today.
But! We’ve got plans for the Items tab to make it closer to what it needs to be. As I said, imagine an inventory screen or basic spreadsheet and you’ve got a pretty good idea. We’re not sure when we’ll get a chance to work on it, but it’s on our list.
Search Reloaded
Ryan made some awesome updates to search over the past couple weeks, and they finally went out last night. I thought I’d give a quick rundown, although the best thing to do is try it out for yourself.
More context
The formatting for the results is much nicer now, with more text for the wiki pages and adventure log posts. Before, a search hit just showed the name of the page and a link to it. As a bonus, the contextual text displayed is text where the search term was found.
Keyword highlighting
The search term you are looking for is automatically highlighted where found. This makes it much easier to quickly scan through the results.
Type filtering
By default, a search will return all kinds of results: characters, wiki pages, adventure log posts, and more. But, if you know exactly where you want to look, you can filter to restrict it to only the type of data you are looking for.
Go Ascendant for campaign-specific search
Remember, if you’re Ascendant, all your campaigns will have campaign-specific search enabled. This is much handier than using the sitewide search, since you can restrict the search to only your campaign’s content. It’s extremely handy, trust me! If you want to enable this awesome feature, tell your GM to Ascend Today!
Creating an API – First Steps
Over our lifetime, we’ve gotten a handful of requests for an API. In every case, our answer was, “We really want to do this, but just don’t have the time right now.” Well, we’re tired of that answer, and have decided to make some time. We’re super-excited about the idea of third-party developers making cool integrations with Obsidian Portal, and we can’t wait to see what cool stuff you all come up with.
Getting Started
Obsidian Portal is a fairly complex system now, with lots of heterogeneous data. Users, campaigns, wiki pages, adventure log posts, characters, items, maps, images, and surely some other stuff I’m forgetting. It would take forever to build API hooks for all of that data, so we’re going to take some baby steps first. The first phase will (probably) be read-only that exposes a fraction of our data for consumption by third party apps. This is where we need your help: What do you want?
There’s no point in us making an API unless some of you are writing apps to consume our data. We’ve got a few people we’re already talking to, but we want to include as much feedback as possible. If you’re interested, please let us know what you’re thinking.
Basically, I need answers to the following questions:
- What are you planning to do?
- What data do you need from Obsidian Portal?
If you have ideas, come to the forum and discuss it in the API thread.
Keep it serious
Before anyone starts throwing out ideas and requests, I’d like to make it clear that we plan to focus on actual developers and actual applications. I don’t want to get dragged into theoretical “It’d be cool if…” brainstorming. There are a lot of possibilities here, and I want the initial push to be in the direction of something concrete, even if it’s not earth-shattering.
Timeline
Our motto is “Under promise, Over deliver” and I intend to hold to that here. I’m not going to give a definitive timeline, and instead say that hopefully we will have something stable by the end of 2010, or early 2011.
Free System Friday: BattleTech RPG Quick-Start Rules
Boots on the ground, soldier! The universe is a-flame with war and you need to do your part. Welcome to BattleTech.
It is a universe at war. Even as mankind reached out to command the stars, the human lust for conflict and conquest could not be overcome as easily as the distances of light years. Driven by the dream of one day ruling all of humanity, mighty empires formed, fell, and rose again. From the chaos of war arose the Star League, the pinnacle of human civilization, a Golden Age where a lasting peace and time of prosperity seemed possible at last. But greed, ambition, and treachery combined to tear it all down once more, plunging all of the worlds humans called home into centuries of simmering conflict.
Yes BattleTech, the old-standby. Well for this Free System Friday, we’re hooking you up with the BattleTech RPG Quick-Start Rules! It’s got everything you need (short of players and dice) to suit up and take the war among the stars to your living room. Why, it’s even got purdy pictures!
So? What are you waiting for? Grab some friends, grab your dice, grab the rules, and fight the good fight!
New System Thursday: Star Wars Roleplaying Game
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The game, based on WEG’s earlier Ghostbusters RPG, established much of the groundwork of what later became the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and their sourcebooks are still frequently cited by Star Wars fans as reference material. Lucasfilm considered their sourcebooks so authoritative that when Timothy Zahn was hired to write what became the Thrawn trilogy, he was sent a box of West End Games Star Wars books and directed to base his novel on the background material presented within.
By the end of the game’s run around 140 sourcebook and adventure supplements were published for the game during its run through three editions.
In addition fifteen issues of a magazine series, the Star Wars Adventure Journal, were published between 1994 and 1998. The Adventure Journal was published in novel format of around 280 pages, and consisted of adventures and articles for the game, plus short stories intended to provide inspiration for gamemasters and news relating to Star Wars.
WEG’s license to produce Star Wars material was lost after the company declared bankruptcy in 1998, and the license was later picked up by Wizards of the Coast, who held the license until 2010.
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Thoughts on the new DDI Character Builder
Since everyone else is pontificating about the new web-only character builder, I thought I’d jump in and give my totally unqualified opinion. I don’t even have a DDI subscription, mainly because I’m on a Mac. But, I do know a little about running a tabletop gaming web application, so I’ll weigh in from that perspective.
